A fellow soldier — a guy he’d known for only a few months — was killed as they fought together in the Gulf War. Retelling the story doesn’t make him emotional. But the memory stayed with him. And even though he’d never told anyone the story of the day his friend died, it was all he could think about when he joined StoryForce, Cape Fear Community College’s writing group for student veterans.

“The first day that we went in there, the title just came into my head and stuck there,” said Rhodes, who’s finishing his associate’s degree at CFCC. “It was almost natural, the way the story came out.”

StoryForce began last year as a way for student veterans like Rhodes to write about what they experienced during their time in the military. CFCC enrolled more than 900 veterans over the past year and has a strong support network for veterans.

Dina Greenberg, a teaching assistant at the college and one of StoryForce’s founders, wanted to provide these students with an uncommon way to work through some of the emotions they brought back to civilian life. The students meet throughout the year, working with mentors on their stories, and produce a book each May.

Rhodes, one of six students in last year’s group, joined StoryForce with more writing experience than most veterans. He has always devoured stories, reading more than 100 books a year, and he decided long ago that he could write stories just as compelling as the ones he was reading. He often writes fiction pieces and poetry to share with his family and friends.

But before last year, he’d never written anything about his four years in the Army.

Rhodes joined the Army as a 17-year-old, fresh out of high school. He was stationed in Aschaffenburg, Germany, arriving on base on Thanksgiving Day in 1990. That’s when he met Clarence Cash, the talkative Southern soldier who became the subject of Rhodes’ story, “Me, Johnny Cash and the Gulf War.”

Rhodes writes about bonding with Cash over their mutual love for music – the source of Cash’s nickname – and hearing Cash tell story after story to anyone who would listen.

As he was writing the story, Rhodes combed through old photos to spark his memories of Cash.

“Things just started to come back,” he said. “It brought back all of the memories, all of the good times we’d had together as a group.”

That’s the goal of StoryForce, said Greenberg, who has researched the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on servicemen and women.

“We created a space where people felt comfortable enough to open up and share,” she said. “It’s low-key. It’s not about course credit; it’s not about feeling like you’ve got an assignment and something that’s due next week. This is a place for you to feel safe. This is a place for you to feel that people are listening.”

Page 2 of 2 - Rhodes writes that Cash was killed in action in February 1991, just three months after Rhodes met him. Rhodes writes that Cash’s death made him angry and left him confused.

Twenty years later, as Rhodes finally tells the story of Johnny Cash, he still has those questions. But he also has a sense of peace. He finished his story with a poem he wrote for a fallen soldier like Cash, saying that’s how he chooses to remember him now.

“I hope he hears it,” Rhodes writes, “and I hope it brings a smile to his face.”